LET ME STEAL THIS MOMENT FROM YOU NOW

Day: April 2, 2012

I can tell you this now that it is not April Fools Day and you will believe me.

Many of you have asked whether there will be an audiobook version of Redshirts, and if so, who will be reading it.

The answers:

Yes, there will be an audiobook version of Redshirts;

And, yes, it will be read by Wil Wheaton.

Because, come on, people. Not only is Wil Wheaton a most excellent reader of my novels — we are together nominated for two Audie awards this year, for Fuzzy Nation and for Agent to the Stars — but it is a novel named Redshirts. If ever there were a no-brainer between book and reader, this is it.

So now you know. You may commence with your squee. Remember: If you buy the book and the audiobook, then you can follow along as Wil reads! It totally makes sense to do that!

While we are on the subject of Wil Wheaton, did you know that Wil has a new show, on the Geek & Sundry online channel, called Tabletop, in which he and a few of his geek friends get together and play games? On a table? Specifically, its top? It’s true. And as it’s a YouTube show, it’s embeddable, so here it is for your super-nerdy delight.

So, uh, hey: Want to win every single Tor book I’ve ever written? If you sign up for the Tor/Forge Newsletter (or if you are already a newsletter subscriber, enter at the link I’m about to give you), you can be entered in a sweepstakes for copies of all my Tor books, including the upcoming novel Redshirts. That’s ten books!

In other news, holy crap, I’ve written ten books for Tor! Seems like a lot in just seven years, you know?

Anyway: Here’s the link to enter. Please note that if you are a newsletter subscriber, you apparently have to make the effort to enter; they won’t enter you automatically.

Also: The sweepstakes is only open to US residents. I know, I know. There’s a whole rest of the world out there. I validate your existence, I swear. But that’s how the sweepstakes rules go.

Anyone whose seenthe covers for the manga of The Shadow War of the Night Dragon has fallen in love with them, and for good reason: They are fantastic, and fantastically funny. Full credit for that goes to artist Madeleine Rosca (of Hollow Fields fame), who did a terrific job incorporating elements of what I had written (werewolves, vampires, demon squids, spoon-bearing badgers) with her own delightfully blissed-out imagination. The best compliment I could give her is saying that when I saw the covers, I was deeply disappointed that the rest of the books do not actually exist. And I’m the (putative) writer!

And yes, just in case you didn’t check the date, these covers were an April Fool’s Day joke from Tor.com, one I was happy to have a hand in for the second year. Clearly this time around it was Madeleine Rosca who did all the heavy lifting, which is why I wanted to make sure I took the time to acknowledge her contribution to the weirdly growing legend that is TSWOTND.

And to everyone who’s said to me, “you know you’re just going to end up writing these, right?” I say:

DON’T TEMPT ME.

There is actually more to say about TSWOTND, but I’m going to leave that for another time. For now, I just want to repeat: Madeleine Rosca, you are awesome. Thank you.